


Missing

by time_converges



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_converges/pseuds/time_converges
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty escapes.  Joan disappears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monkiainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkiainen/gifts).



> Thanks to nairobiwonders and thirdgenerationrockette for the beta help!  
> No spoilers after episode 11 of Season 3, as requested.

Moriarty escaped.

The first letters arrived only a few days later, one each for Sherlock and Joan. His read simply, “Did you really think you could contain me?” Joan’s said, “I wonder, what would he sacrifice to save you?”

The morning she disappeared, Joan whispered to Clyde, “Tell him not to look for me.” She went up to the roof and knocked on the beehive to say goodbye. The Euglassia Watsonia hummed as she said, “Watch over him.” 

She left everything behind but the cash in her pocket and the clothes on her back. She paused to pat Angus on the head. “Tell him I’m sorry.” She left as though she were going on her usual morning run, and disappeared into the city.

Sherlock noticed immediately upon returning to the brownstone that she had left behind her phone on the table. He saw that her running shoes were missing along with her, and thought she would be annoyed to run without her music. He idly put the phone in his pocket as he resumed his study of the manuscripts one of his sources had provided him. Nearly an hour passed before he looked up and realized she hadn’t returned from her run. He stood abruptly, the chair clattering noisily against the floor as he shoved it backward. 

He burst out of the house, looking up and down the street, before starting off in the reverse direction of her usual running path. He tried to convince himself that she had just stopped off to visit someone, and without her phone, of course she couldn’t call. The cold knot in the pit of his stomach refused to dissipate. He sped up, half-jogging through her usual route, finding no trace of her anywhere before arriving, out of breath, back at the brownstone. 

Captain Gregson put out an APB almost before Sherlock had finished telling him, and was at the brownstone with Marcus not long after.

“And neither of you thought to tell me about the letters?” Gregson asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “I thought – we thought,” he paused, swallowing hard. “We thought we would handle it.”

Gregson shook his head. “Honestly, you two, dealing with things.” He turned and nodded at the officers at the door. “I’m leaving these two here to keep an eye on you. I want you—“ he stabbed his finger at Sherlock – “to stay put, okay? We’ll find her. I’m going back to the station to coordinate from there. Keep me updated.”

Marcus and Sherlock both nodded. Marcus sat down at the table across from him. “Was there anything unusual this morning? Anyone on the street, a strange car, anything?”

Sherlock shook his head, fingers tapping on the table. “No. I’ll review my camera footage, but I don’t think so.”  
“We’ll need a copy of the tape, too. What about Joan, did she have plans for today, anything unusual about those?” 

Sherlock shook his head again, then his fingers stilled. “No, only that she left her phone when she went for a run. She uses it for her music, so that is unusual.”

“Okay, anything else? Did she get any strange calls?”

He pulled her phone out from his pocket and unlocked it – he had told her to change her password, but of course she hadn’t. He scrolled through her call and text history, but it had been wiped clean, even his message to her about his errands this morning. He kept his face impassive, but his heart skipped a beat. “No, nothing,” he said, as he slipped the phone back into his pocket.

“We might need that, later,” Marcus said quietly, nodding at the phone.

“Of course.” Sherlock stood up abruptly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should examine the surveillance footage. I’ll email you a copy, of course,” he added hastily, from halfway up the stairs.

The footage showed nothing, of course, no strange vans parked outside, no shadowy figures lurking about. Only Joan, her hair in a ponytail, sans phone, leaving for her usual jog. Only today, she glanced up at the camera he hadn’t known she was aware of. He forced himself to sit still as he looked back over several days, and she hadn’t done that before. Curious.

He ransacked her room, every minute hoping that she would come storming in, demanding to know why he was going through her things. Hoping to find another letter from Moriarty, or another clue where she could be. Or that his phone would burst into life, with a call from Gregson or Marcus saying they had found her. Alive, of course. Of course she was alive, somewhere. The alternative was unthinkable.

He sat, finally, heart pounding, in the middle of her room, and pulled out her phone again. He tapped through her contacts, her messages, everything, but it all had been wiped as if it had never been her phone. He turned it over in his hands, thinking. She normally kept everything on her phone - contacts, calendar, everything. He knew she was meticulous about it.

He reached for her laptop. Surely she would turn up on a surveillance camera somewhere in the city. People didn’t actually disappear, not today. He paused with his fingers hovering over the keyboard. No, Moriarty would be watching him, and if she hadn’t taken Watson, he certainly didn’t want to be the reason Moriarty did find her. He would need someone else, and hopefully they wouldn’t ask for something very time-consuming in return.

In the end, Everyone agreed to help based only on the promise of a reprise of the public delivery of the Twilight manifesto – as soon as he mentioned Watson’s name, they were willing to help. 

Hours stretched into days, and his nerves felt as frayed as they ever had in rehab as he paced the brownstone. He convinced Gregson to call off the officers at the brownstone, but he couldn’t tell him or Marcus to call off the search without risking alerting Moriarty or her various contacts – who knew where she had eyes and ears. So he paced, and waited, and hoped that he was right.

Countless cups of tea, watching Clyde munch on his favorite lettuce as he kept him company at the table. Countless conversations with Angus, going in circles about where she had gone, and why, and what had she been thinking. Angus was no help at all. Countless hours sitting with the bees, letting their buzzing calm his buzzing mind as he waited for news. Little food and no sleep left him feeling wired and on edge, twitchy and agitated.

The message from one of the members of Everyone – coded, but clear that they had found her - was exquisite relief.

When he left to go find her, he told Clyde, “I’ll bring her back, as soon as I can.” He went up to the roof and told the bees, “I’m going to go fetch your mistress.” He told Angus, “Sorry, old friend, but I do favor her.” He couldn’t leave a note for Ms. Hudson, but he trusted her to care for Clyde and the bees until they returned. He left with nothing but the cash in his pocket and the clothes on his back as he disappeared into the night. He tried not to look too hopeful, and avoided as many cameras as he could.

***  
Sherlock found Joan at a seedy hotel in Jersey, as Everyone had reported. She opened the door to his knock, after a short pause when he knew from the rustling sound that she was checking the peephole. He said, “Really, Watson, this place is such a cliché.” He hoped his tone covered up his overwhelming relief at seeing her.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room, bolting the door behind them. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

“Your phone,” he said, simply. 

She tilted her head. “My phone? I wiped it, and left it behind, how could you—“

“Precisely. If you had merely left it, that would have seemed like carelessness. But to wipe it first, that seems deliberate. Not wanting to leave any clue where you might have gone, or why.”

She shook her head. “Damn.”

“Fortunately I was the only one to notice that. I did not turn your phone over to the police, otherwise Marcus or Captain Gregson might have reached the same conclusion as I did. And I have since destroyed your phone, and my own.”

“Thank you.” She walked over and sat on the end of the bed. “So, why are you here?”

He sighed, and sat next to her. “Watson, what on earth were you thinking?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want Moriarty to use me against you. I thought if I disappeared, I could find her, and---“

“—Single-handedly take down an international criminal syndicate?” he finished for her, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes, if you must know.” She crossed her arms over her chest, her shoulders stiff.

“Watson, I do not doubt you are capable of such a feat. Indeed, I cannot think of anyone else who could, save myself of course.”

“Of course, except you,” she said, with her familiar eyeroll.

“But why on earth did you think you needed to do it alone? And not tell me?” he continued. 

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Watson, don’t you know what these past few days have been like for me?” he asked, softly. 

She looked up at him, her eyes bright. “I—“ She shook her head again, taking a deep breath. “So the phone was what made you start looking, but how did you find me, without tipping off Moriarty?”

“Everyone traced you through the various public surveillance cameras. They did all the legwork, as it were, so nothing could come back to me. I couldn’t risk Moriarty knowing I was looking for you, although I laid a passable false trail through various means, enough to keep her busy if she were watching me. Everyone has also assured me they covered the tracks they used to find you.” He glanced around at the room, spare and empty save for a new laptop and a messy stack of papers on the desk, and then at the dark circles under her eyes. He wondered what the last few days had been like for her. “So, Watson, what do you say?”

“About?”

“Shall we take down an international criminal syndicate? In secret? Together?” He held his breath, awaiting her answer.

Her shoulders relaxed as if a weight had been removed. “Together,” she agreed.


End file.
